Satellite technology to help fight crime
To combat criminality, police forces already use a vast set of technologies, but now, a team of engineers and researchers have taken it to the next level. They worked on combining drones and space technologies to help in the fight against crime.
In a pilot demonstration in Turin in late 2022, the S-EDGE (SatEllite anD 5G for Law Enforcement application) system showed how it could help police forces patrol extensive areas and support on-demand missions.
"The development of uncrewed aerial systems has some potential to revolutionise police duties. Different end-users such as police forces see a benefit to using this technology for patrolling and ensuring public safety," explains Volker Schumacher, applications engineer at ESA, who interfaced with the companies involved.
The drones within the S-EDGE system are built to survey and patrol a designated area while continuously sending data to a central platform. Each drone carries optical and thermal imaging cameras. Because of the 5G network infrastructure and satellite connectivity, they can send real-time data to users, including video streaming.
There's a component of artificial intelligence (AI) as well. An AI-powered image/ video processing tool helps analyse each image to detect particular objects (like a weapon) and to identify subjects of interest.
Having drones flying around while watching over a crowd can be helpful but, simultaneously, somewhat invasive. "People will probably not be very enthusiastic about being 'surveyed' unless they can see some sort of benefit arising from this approach," Volker adds.
And when it comes to the applicability of this technology, the possibilities seem vast. According to Volker, a system like S-EDGE could help find lost people, protect police officers during searches for armed suspects, aid disaster relief and recovery and even support crowd management.
Now that the demonstration project is concluded, the next step is to bring this system into operational usage by the user community who took part in the project and others having similar needs. “This is what we aim to achieve in the Business Applications part of ESA dedicated to downstream service development,” Volker concludes.
S-EDGE is a project co-funded by the ESA Business Applications Programme.
